The story of a retired crazy who seems to be able to find one adventure after another.

It’s the morning of the 30th and everyone is up and getting ready to go to school. Barbara, Ayron and the boys are going to drop me at the airport on the way to school. We all crowd into Barbara’s Fit and off we go.

There’s no traffic to speak of and we get to the airport with no dramas. Unload my gear. Give B a kiss and hug. Hug Ayron, Talyn and Mika. And they’re off again. Pick up my bag. Damn, this thing is heavy. (I’m carrying about 10 pounds extra weight in tools for repairs on the road.) Into the terminal.

Check in for the Washington flight. Wait a couple of hours. Board the flight. The flight takes off on time and lands in Washington a few minutes early. (Things are going surprisingly smoothly.) My gear shows up in baggage claim. The rental car is ready.

There’s no traffic to speak of into Washington and up Connecticut Avenue NW a couple of miles past the Natio0nal Zoo. Find the visa agency and a parking space right in front of the building. Put a couple of quarters (which I even have in my pocket) in the parking meter.

Up the elevator to the office. Announce my self, get the brand new passport which I’ve only previously seen for 15 minutes back in Atlanta. It’s got a shiny new Chinese visa and the all of the data on the visa is correct. (Good thing. This whole exercise would have been for naught if there was so much as a misplaced letter. See previous reference to Chinese anal visa requirements.)

Back in the car. Follow the zig-zag route that my phone GPS works out and arrive at the airport by 4’ish for first leg of my flight (DCA to LAX) that departs at 7:20. Get gas for the rental car and drop it at the return. Bus to the terminal. Check my bag. Get boarding passes. Clear security. Breath an enormous sigh of relief.

The short version: the 6 hour Los Angeles flight leaves pretty much on time and arrives a few minutes early though not without its own drama. Just as we are about to cross the Sierras and start our descent to LAX, the pilot comes on the intercom and announces that there will be severe turbulence on the descent to LAX. All the way to landing.

He was remarkably honest. The plane got beat up pretty seriously and the turbulence went all the way to the ground. The landing itself was pretty spectacular. The flight crew really worked that 20 minutes or so. On touch down, the passengers gave the crew a round of applause. That’s common all around the world but rarely seen inside the US. They clapped this time though.

The next leg to Hong Kong leaves a few minutes late, delayed while the runway direction at the airport was reversed. But the climb out is fairly smooth which is very odd considering the violent the arrival was. Everyone settles in for the long haul.

Long isn’t really an adequate word to describe this leg. It’s about 15 hours long. To put that in perspective, that’s more than 7 movies on the in-seat entertainment system. With 2 full meals and a couple of snack meals thrown in to break the monotony.

I normally can’t sleep on long flights. Especially in economy seating. The seats are too cramped and the seat pitch is too close for me to get comfortable enough to sleep. Occasional dozing is all I can usually manage.

This flight, however, I have the first meal and then fall asleep. That’s a blessing. Any sleep is a blessing on a flight where you are trapped in a cramped seat for 15 hours. I guess the stress of trying to get this tripped to actually happen catches up with me and I dropped of for what seems like most of the flight.

I finally wake up and notice that everyone is still asleep. Very few people are even watching movies. Hmmm. That’s odd. I look at my watch. We still have over 8 hours to Hong Kong. That explains it. I watch 3 ½ movies during the remainder of the flight.

WE land at Hong Kong with no issues and take off on the last leg to Phnom Penh. The last 2 ½ hours are quiet and uneventful. We land in a driving rain storm in Phnom Penh. Clear customs. Get my bags. Change money in to Cambodian riels. Get a cab and head off in search of the Hotel Zing (really, that’s its name.)

This is still the “hot, dry” season. And the taxi driver says that this is very unusual. It should not be raining. Well, it’s raining and the streets are flooded (Phnom Penh seems to be table top flat with, apparently, drainage problems.) This, of course, has traffic on the major boulevards, at a complete standstill. But the taxi driver is a real pro.

As soon as he encounters a hold up, he ducks into some alley way and works his way around the traffic . At first this just looks like the usual taxi scam to run up the fare. But as I watch the track on the phone GPS, he’s making steady progress towards the Hotel Zing. It’s kind of a “2 steps forward, 1 step back” kind of progress. But we finally get there just as the rain starts to let up.

I’m the first to arrive and I’m not sure when, exactly, the rest of the merry band is to arrive so I settle in to the room. I’m trying to fight off the urge to take “just a short little nap” knowing that that will end up being an hours long deep sleep that will just delay coming to grips with jet lag caused by the 12 hour time zone shift.

An hour or later, Andy Mac Dermid shows up and tells me that he’s going to the airport to arrange transpo for the rest of the mob. Against my better judgment, I set my alarm and take an hour long nap.

The alarm works and I get up just a few minutes before there’s knocking on my door and Clemo and Pinky are standing there. They look great. Just like they did when saw each other last in Danang in 2016.